UAV and Commercial Drone Industry Outlook & Predictions for 2018

GEO Jobe, a leading GIS software and solution provider offering UAV mapping services, is pleased to announce projections for the Commercial Drone industry in 2018.

According to BI Intelligence, sales of drones to surpass $12 billion in 2021, most of this will occur across the three main segments of the drone industry: Consumer Drones, Enterprise Drones (also known as Commercial Drones), and Government Drones. For us at GEO Jobe, the future looks bright, particularly with our UAV & Aerial Mapping group. The group is supporting our existing clients by enabling us to provide additional capabilities and meet the demands for rapid, affordable data update projects (think orthophotography). With the rapid explosion in the UAV industry in 2017 there’s been much growth and a shakedown of players in the UAV idustry. With that, we share our expectations and predictions for the UAV industry in 2018.

UAV / Drone Industry Outlook &Predictions for 2018:

– Expect lots of talk and maybe some action around standardized state and local UAS regulations/restrictions.

– Clearer distinctions between the classes of sUAS pilots – Commercial (Part 107) and recreational and the different rules and regulations that apply to each.

– Continued progress with more FAA automated and “instant” flight authorizations for Part 107 Pilots.

– Expect further specialization or perhaps winnowing within the software industry.

– sUAS is a creating a new demand for ground level accuracy capture equipment (GPS).

– Could there be the possibility of an RTK drone that connects to statewide or broader VRS automatically?

– Expect lots of talk and maybe some action around standardized state and local UAS regulations/restrictions. Clearer distinctions between the classes of sUAS pilots – Commercial (Part 107) and recreational and the different rules and regulations that apply to each.

– Continued progress with more FAA automated and “instant” flight authorizations for Part 107 Pilots.

– Current UAV use is leading to large photo capture datasets. Several platforms allow for the hosting and viewers for 3D Models and orthomosaics. But there will be a need to view online very large images and models well into the gigabytes range.

– Expect to see sUAS playing a huge role in the exploding Smart City initiatives.

– We think that 2018 will actually produce an increase in demand for UAV providers.

– The big question for the coming year where there is really no clear apparent consensus is – will this industry be called sUAS? or UAV? or drone? Or fly-by-night?!

With a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s, or drones) GEO Jobe is now offering high resolution low altitude orthophotography services in Tennessee and surrounding areas (Arkansas, Mississippi) and hosting options via our GeoPowered Cloud. We are providing orthophoto planimetric mapping products including small area rectified mosaics, digital surface models (DSM), digital terrain models (DTM), and 3D models as well as UAV data hosting & image services. Founded in 1999, GEO Jobe is a geospatial industry leader responsible for several top apps in the ArcGIS Marketplace including the award winning Admin Tools for ArcGIS Online, and the GEOpowered Cloud solution for enterprise GIS. GEO Jobe has been an Esri business partner for 16 years and has received multiple awards from Esri including the 2015 Innovative Marketplace Provider and the 2013 Organization Use of ArcGIS Online award.

For more information about GEO Jobe’s UAV and aerial mapping services, including sample projects and images see www.geo-jobe.com/uav. Aerial mapping mission price quotes are available by contacting GEO Jobe directly.

For more information:
See http://www.geo-jobe.com/uav
@geojobegis / @geojobeuav

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